Proto:Grapple Dog/Steam Next Fest Demo/Sprites

This is a sub-page of Proto:Grapple Dog/Steam Next Fest Demo.

A fair amount of sprites and assets were removed or replaced from the final game to clean up some space. These are their stories.

Unused Sprites

Placeholder Island (sBoat_stack_island_bonus)

A very, very rough placeholder graphic of an island for a level. The game originally would've shown a flag with a gem on it if you got all of the gems in that level. The circle to select a level also looks significantly different.

Early Pablo Design (sPlr_xxx1)

An almost complete set of sprites from Pablo's early design remains in this build. In this design, Pablo sports a helmet with a lamp on it and red clothes. Not all sprites were reworked however, with things like diagonal grapple throws being left unused. A reference to this early design is in the final game, where in the kitchen area of the boat interior is a small figurine resembling this design.

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  sPlr_idle1

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  sPlr_run1

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  sPlr_run_fast1

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  sPlr_skid1

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  sPlr_jump1

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  sPlr_jump_outline1

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  sPlr_land1

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  sPlr_throw_up1

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  sPlr_throw_diagonal1

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  sPlr_swing1

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  sPlr_swing_flip1

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  sPlr_climbup_rope1

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  sPlr_climbdown_rope1

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  sPlr_climb_hands1

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  sPlr_wall1

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  sPlr_wall_impact1

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  sPlr_run_awaycam1

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  sPlr_run_intocam1

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  sPlr_die1

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  sPlr_die_spin1

Controllers (sController_xxx)

Controller sprites for the Nintendo Switch Joycons, Pro Controller, and Xbox 360. The Xbox 360 sprite also has a button prompt for pressing A, for some reason.

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  sController_joycons

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  sController_switchpro

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  sController_xbox

Demo Screen (sDemo_xxx)

Various sprites for an unreleased demo exist in this build, mainly a splash screen with several windows explaining the controls. Two of the animated windows look unfinished however, with the top right window having a duplicated frame and the bottom right window missing most of its UI.

This screen also goes to show different controls. There's no mention of groundpounds, grappling is mapped to K by default and swinging requires its own set of buttons rather than pressing the arrow keys.

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  sDemo_startcard

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  sDemo_aim_anim

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  sDemo_run

A fully constructed splash screen can be seen here.

Pablo's idle pose is also slightly different, with his face being more sunken in.

Early	Final

Demo Checkmark (sDemo_tick)

A checkmark that would've been used in the demo level select when completing a level. Weirdly enough, despite the menu going unused, the checkmark code was removed along with this sprite in the final game, though it does function as intended in this build.

Animated Placeholder Dialog Sprites (sDialogue_xxx)

Some rough placeholder dialog sprites are exclusive to this build. Only three remain in this build; two for Professor and one for Toni, with Professor using her early design.

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  sDialogue_prof_afraid

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  sDialogue_prof_sigh

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  sDialogue_toni_stoic

Static Placeholder Dialog Sprites (sDialogue_NPCxxx)

Two placeholder sprites for NPCs, showing the sad crow and a cut robot NPC that was supposed to appear in The Great Workshop, the only place in the game that has no NPCs. The crow NPC was originally taller and pointing at Pablo for whatever reason.

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  sDialogue_NPC3_1

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  sDialogue_NPC5_1

Toni's 4th Wall Break (sDialogue_toni_turntocamera)

A sprite of Toni looking directly to the player during a dialog sequence. This is never used at any point in this build either. Thanks, I guess?

Intro Cutscene Beginning Concept Art (sFalling_hole_bg)

Concept art depicting the intro of the game, still using Nul's early design.

Early Fruit Effects (sFruit_effect_old)

Some more basic and simpler fruit collecting effects, with this being one outlined circle with a hue rather than several small circles.

Early	Final

Intro Cutscene End Concept Art (sIntro_end_storyboard)

Concept art depicting the end of the intro cutscene, using early character and map designs for everyone except Pablo. The cutscene would've played out differently as well, showing off the scrapped Cosmic Batteries, rather than the finalized Cosmic Gadgets, and doesn't mention the grapple anywhere.

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  Pablo finds a Cosmic Gadget Battery!

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  Nul lurks from behind...

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  ...And electrocutes Pablo. Quite different from him just luring Pablo in.

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  Toasted dog.

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  Nul coloring red, turns out he isn't as trustworthy as we thought.

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  Nul flies towards the battery.

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  The screen turns pink...

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  ...And Nul grows a body, rather than finding one.

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  With Nul having the power of a Cosmic Battery, in this unused bit...

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  ...He awakens the robots around him...

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  ...And a dragon, ready for some world destruction.

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  A shot of what's not The Great Inventor's statue, but just a tower.

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  Pablo gets blasted out and doesn't even get to jump in the water himself.

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  Nul standing proudly, without any of his robot reqruitments behind him.

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  Pablo falls in, and Nul got away.

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  No word from Pablo, but Nul is still busy getting away.

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  Our hero slowly drowning...

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  ...and fading away...

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  ...until we're left with a solid screen.

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  And with the screen slowly scrolling above water...

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  ...Professor and Toni picked up Pablo with their bare hands instead of a jetpack.

The last screen is duplicated twice in the sprite index for some reason.

Cosmic Batteries(?) (sItemget_battery1)

An early version of the Cosmic Gadgets: The Cosmic Batteries, showing sprites of 5 identical batteries with a different palette each. Just like the Cosmic Gadgets, each palette represents the color of each world, with a 5th purple palette shown for The Great Workshop.

The graphic for the battery would become one of the Cosmic Gadgets, but its palette was brightened up.

Early	Final

Item Background Placeholder (sItemget_testbg)

A rough placeholder background for getting a Cosmic Gadget or a gem.

Storybook Cutouts (sPage_test)

Poorly scaled figures of Pablo and Professor, with Professor showing one of her early designs. The file name suggests that these would've been used for the storybook intro, in which Professor would read the story to Pablo rather than directly to the player. These figures remain in the final game, but not under this filename.

Storybook Page (sStorybook_page)

A storybook page with page sides that are shown sideways rather than from the bottom.

Storybook Placeholder (sStorybook_test)

A rough version of the storybook scene meant for testing.

Sprite Differences

Nul Boss Portal

The portal that the game would show during the final boss with Nul was at first a green spiral with a whopping 2700 frames (titled sBoss_nul_portal_back), which takes a while to load in-game. The finalized portal (titled sNul_portal_pink) was changed to pink wobbly lines, and has around 1/35th of the frames that the early portal has.

SNF Build	Final

Pablo Dialog Shocked Animation

Pablo's dialog animation (titled sDialogue_pablo_shocked) looks different compared to the final game, having a darker non-outlined pupil, a smaller mouth, one frame less and a bigger canvas size (that has been cropped in this upload). The finalized sprite is also titled sDialogue_pablo6_shocked.

SNF Build	Final

This sprite goes unused in this build, though it was supposed to appear during the game's intro. However, due to a programming error, the game defaults back to Pablo's neutral animation. Pablo's neutral emotion variable is 0, and his shocked emotion variable is 5. The game only checks what emotion to display by checking the first variable on that list when changing what character is talking. While the variables are set to 5, the first variable was set by accident to 0, thus Pablo's neutral emotion is shown. This was fixed for the final game.

A corrected version of what this dialog exchange was supposed to look like is shown here.

SNF Build (as is)	SNF Build (corrected)	Final

Storybook Pages

The storybook in the intro (titled sStorybook_pages) had some of its pages fleshed out, as they look notably unfinished in this build, missing its details and thick outlines.

Page 2 has The Great Inventor's hands made thicker and rounded.

SNF Build	Final

Page 3 replaced the film reel and telephone with a grapple key(?) and a Roboy.

SNF Build	Final

Page 7 added clouds and got rid of the grapple. Note the rough and unfinished lines in between the Cosmic Gadgets.

SNF Build	Final

Page 8 got once again rid of the grapple, added outlines, got rid of the sparkles around The Great Inventor's head and added some clouds.

SNF Build	Final